It's harder to shoot porn today than it was back in the old days.

That's what I don't get.

A few posts above he goes on about his vast business experience but he doesn't seem to grasp the fact that the most important factor in running a business is that you turn a profit. You don't need the very best content paid for at the highest price to be profitable. You can buy or create some average content and still turn a profit.

You can buy cheap content and spend a lot of money selling it but as long as you turn a profit you're successful. It's about what's in your budget and how you spread and spend it accordingly.

I've read through this entire thread and it's apparent to me that the root of his rantings is based on two things. The fact that two very unfortunate things happened that forced him into retirement which would be hard for anyone to face and deal with. The fact that in his prime his work commanded top dollar but has been significantly devalued today because of the internet.

Two things that completely changed his familiar and comfortable life. It's more than enough to make one bitter or bat shit crazy and I've found myself in the same position but under different circumstances. I liked reading this thread but now it's just painful to hear him go on and on not knowing where his place is. I hope he finds it. I'm still looking for mine

the only way to debate you is to use your words because that's the only words you read.

again putting words in my mouth. i tell my customers that it is easy to open a paysite using PornCMS. i never tell them it is easy to make money. fucking quote me you old has-been.

i tell my customers that the real work is AFTER you open the paysite. i have many current customers making a profit. i am sorry your piece of shit site with decade old content is not making $10k+ a month. maybe you should hire Damian and start making a living instead of telling everybody how smart you are. the only thing that matters at the end of the day is if you survive. you will be a ghost in 2 years. i will be here for another 20. so fuck you.

tell me i'm wrong. its expected.

Good luck selling porn to 18 year olds. LOL

Not with saturating my main markets. If we found a top girl we shot her 10 times max. So the 10 sets were great sellers. Shooting the same girl 20 times wouldn't necessarily make twice the money. Like doubling the number of DVDs on a shelf or porn sites or affiliates. Unless it's in a market/niche that's starved of dvds, sites or affiliates.

We started out with that and then went to rotating content. The magazines were our bread and butter and when the demand of them tailed off we slowed down shooting. We do have 2,500 + sets and 1,000 + videos

No we do better than that. We allow them to see what they're buying before they enter any info in. http://www.paulmarkhamteens.com/members_tour/index.php Surfers are educated today and know a lot of 3 days trials or just a con, free or paid. A LOT of our income comes from people signing up for just 3 days over and over and over again.

Yes, guilty as charged. Otherwise I wouldn't have any affiliates as it was the route we all HAd to go down. Because that's the way everyone else did it.

Because we made a lot more money than they did. Either they're bad at marketing, business or shooting. Or like working for a smaller living.

Because as a shooter I made more than any other shooter only here. By selling my content over and over and over again. I have no real knowledge of what Robbie makes. But know when I see something that raise my eyebrows. A sign up every second as an affilite would make him the richest man on porn by now. He would of been earning $54,000 a hour @ 60 x 60 x $15 = $54,000

$1,296,000 a day.

$473,040,000 a year.

Even at 1 a minute he would of been on close to $8 million a year. I would say probably a lot lower than he says. Unless he's sitting on a beach in the Bahamas posting for the fun of it. No he's still having to work hard with a site of CM fucking people.

As for Fabian, I have no idea of what he earns. And that's one of the problems with Manwin. It's shrouded in mystery.

All I do know is Lensman sold his entire business, during the good years, for $9 million. Not a great deal of money in the porn business and nothing like a great deal of money in the real business world. And everyone here envied him. Like he had won the lottery.

It was a nice figure to be sure, but not a really big sum like many here think.

Today, which is what pays the bills. No one would buy it for 1/10 of that.

I always question whether I would of been better off opening a paysite earlier and throwing more resources at it. I always come up with the same questions.

What effect would it have on our current sources of income?
Did I know enough about online paysites and affiliates?
Would we fail like I saw so many fail?

Do you remember all the sites that didn't make it or scraped a living? I do, I met some of them at shows. It's not as easy as plsureking makes out. I wasn't some green newbie thinking porn was an easy game.

It was a gamble and we took it in about 2005 and it's done all right, but nothing like the content stores or sales to magazines.

You missed my point.

It was easy to get some average content and then throw a lot of traffic at it.

IT ISN'T TODAY. THE GAME HAS CHANGED.

Adapt to 2011. Average content is free on loads of Tubes. Average content means low retention. Average content means fewer customers returning. Average content means the surfer looking to buy KNOWS it's average and everywhere, so lees people clicking on a link or type in. Average content means your site is one of 100s if not 1,000s.

All this means average content needs a lot of very expensive and good marketing to achieve decent results.

You've obviously not read my threads and posts for the last 10 years. My message has been constant. Got nothing to do with being retired and no longer able to earn what we earned in 2005/6 my best years ever in business. Along with a lot of others.

Eva's accident and my cancer didn't force us into retirement. The demise of most magazines, the shit money paid for content AND the fact we made enough money to be ABLE to retire in comfort made the decision for us. You can keep working away, I'm off to watch TV.

You should tell them a bit clearer then.

$10,000 a month

Seriously you clown. That's kind of the level of this business. Someone is boasting he has some clients who barely make 6 figures a year. You condemn yourself if you think %120k is a lot of money.

We had days we made that money and not the odd day either. Today we're not. But we still make enough to be able to laugh at you. Keep working on the newbies.

I may close everything down in 2 years. I've had clowns like you telling me that for the last 10 years. You will be here because you HAVE to. I'm here because I WANT to.

Or do you think this is great marketing?

As for Damian.

http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm

This clown of a marketer is clueless.

Paul why are you trying to screw with me? I never said I made a sale every second. I never said I made a sale every minute.

I said we had a running joke that everytime I blinked my eyes I was making money. It was a joke Paul. A company joke. "Hey I just blinked my eyes and made a dollar!"

I have done nothing but pay you the respect you deserve for your craft...and yet you try to belittle me in post after post by misquoting me and ridiculing me. I DO work hard. I ALWAYS have worked hard. I LOVE working hard. I can barely stand to take a vacation and must have a laptop with me to work while on "vacation" because I love what I do.

I never plan on "retiring" ever. I have been in the entertainment business since I was 8 years old (1969) playing guitar around the country. And whether it was playing in a band around the world as an adult, working in a male strip show, working professional wrestling shows, choreographing and putting together shows for female feature dancing, selling porn, or creating porn...I LOVE being in the entertainment business and have found that the same basic premise works for all of it.

I'm glad you were able to retire and are happy with that. We are different personality types. That's all.

As far as how much money I made as an affiliate...I have posted my stats many times on here. At my height as an affiliate in 2007 I was making an average of $90,000 a month on my TGP's.

Now in 2011 with the pirate sites at full strength...my income as an affiliate averages around $25,000 a month. A HUGE drop. I can't force people to buy memberships when they have left my freesites in droves to see EVERYTHING for free on Pornhub.

So I keep them running because...well, they still make 25 grand a month.

CM's paysite is my new money machine. And it allows me to wait out this entire mess until new copyright laws come into effect.

So a market growing 448% is, er, bad?

I have no idea why posting a link to a page that confirms my earlier post makes me clownesque though? Do explain your genius for the dim-witted.

Or do you jus' be trollin? ;) ;) ;)

PS Great work being so rude to Robbie. His buttons are easier to push than yours! Should carry the thread on for a while. I suggest you get Will or Gideon involved next week to continue your massively brilliant spam.

It's hard to believe after reading the following quotes which you made previously in this thread that you retired ONLY because you weren't getting paid what you felt was just. Now ask yourself, were you ready and willing to retire in the days BEFORE your major setbacks or after them when you didn't have a choice.

you are so irrelevant. so someone that pays $45 a month for their website plus some content is a clown for making over $9k in profit?

man you make my points for me.

lol also funny - everybody in this thread that disagrees with grandpa markham is a clown. keep calling us clowns. you'll be dead soon.

So where do we get the traffic today then?

we all need to chip in for a wolf howling at the moon puzzle for the old man before he has a stroke and is unable to grace us with his mad shot framing skills.

Sorry it was every couple of seconds. I got that wrong.

This is what I read Robbie, sorry if I mistook you saw for you believed.

I thought it was you saw it on your stats, not you believed it was happening.

You don't think it was a migration.

I know it was. Because I was talking to the other sides of the industry ho saw the migration. IN THE ACTUAL FIGURES. But I guess you thinking it makes it right.

So here's the explanation. Go back and look at the core markets. US, Canada, Europe to get a better picture of the increase that matters. Some of the regions with massive increase are hard to bill.

Then think of the size of the adult online industry in 2000. Was it 1/3 of what it is today. Were there a lot fewer Sites, Affiliates and sponsors then?

Now factor in the massive amount of traffic going to Tubes and you can see there are too many people trying to feed out of a decreasing trough.

You claim to be in marketing and that flew over your head. People who can't buy, don't want to buy and won't buy are a very small market. The core of our income comes from a small sector of that increase.

Try reading a book on Demographics if you want to be in marketing.

During our setbacks 2 of our major clients stopped buying. Both magazine clients. So we stopped producing.

Now it's only $9k profit a month.

Can you imagine the server they get for $45 a month and it looking after 450 members a month and all the free traffic. And how much did they spend on content?

Surfers would never look for porn if they didn't have 10,000s of people giving it away for free.

Traffic isn't king. Sign ups are, getting traffic is the easy part. Getting it to your site is the hard part. Why?

Because 100,000 other people are trying to do the same. Take out 90,000 of them and the number of surfers remains the same. (My figures are to show the point.)

The business is saturated with people scraping a living.

********************************************

Most of you make a living by being affiliates. Most of you find it tough because there's too much free stuff, too much crap, too little quality and sign ups/retention sucks.

My point is by making the inside of a site better the sign ups/retention will increase. The better it is, has a direct effect on earnings.

It's not rocket science.

While the vast number of people in this business are complaining of falling sales. I've come up with a possible solution for those who can afford it. Won't work for ever but it might work for a few for a while. And keep them making money, might even increase their earnings. No one wishes to discuss or even debate it. They just flame and scream.

Why won't upping the quality of the product mean it won't make more sales? Please answer this.

Because nobody believes tripling their production budget for the same amount of sets is going to increase their sales by 300%+